


Fall In

by posingasme



Category: Fallout Shelter (Video Game), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fallout (Video Games) Setting, Bottle Caps are currency in a Fallout world, Fallout Video Game References, Gen, M/M, No other Fallout Games referenced, Specifically Fallout Shelter, The Winchesters in a Video Game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-26 19:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30110826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: Inside the world of Fallout Shelter, where bottle caps are currency and radiation turns the slow and unlucky into ghouls, Sam and Dean Winchester are vault dwellers that every Overseer dreams of. They’re strong, smart, fast and...you know...super SPECIAL. Dean is obsessed with being the most valuable dweller in Vault 327. Sam is obsessed with learning more about The Mysterious Stranger in the trench coat who appears and disappears seemingly at random.
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	1. Aged Up and Already SPECIAL

**Author's Note:**

> Fallout Shelter is a mobile game in the Fallout series. This story references ONLY things which could be accessed in Shelter. And in Supernatural, of course. 
> 
> https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_Shelter

Sam could remember the exact moment he had aged up. It was just as excruciating as everyone had promised it would be, but he didn’t care. He could deal with pain. He had spent his whole childhood observing the adults, and he was ready for this. Dean had been icing his shoulder in their living quarters when he had burst in through the door, a full grown man. 

Dean stared at him. A storm of emotions crossed his eyes, but he smiled at last. “About time you joined us, kiddo,” he teased. 

The Level-1 grinned at him. “I’m taller than you.”

His brother rolled his eyes. “First words as an adult,” he grumbled. “You’re taller than me. Asshat.” But he shook his head, and his eyes softened with pride. “Come here. Let me see your SPECIALs.”

Sam chewed his lip, and gripped his bracelet with his large right hand to cover it. “I don’t want to know.”

“That’s stupid. Of course you want to know. Let me see.”

He shook his head stubbornly.

Dean began to laugh, though he cringed when he moved his shoulder too much. “Dude. The Overseer will notice you any minute. Come on.”

With a sigh, he closed the distance between them, and held his left wrist out for inspection. 

A soft hum came from his brother’s throat. 

Anxiety rushed through his veins. “What? What, am I stupid? Or weak? God, Dean! I don’t want to be tossed into a storage room! It’s the most boring, worst job in the whole-“

“Shut up. You’re not stupid. You know that.”

He swallowed hard. “But weak? I-I can train though, right? Do you think I’ll get the chance to train before they just throw me in a depot?”

Dean looked up at him. “That’s what you’re worried about? Sammy, no son of John Winchester is going to end up guarding and cataloging in a damn storage depot!”

“I’m smart enough not to be the first at the vault door, right?”

“Would you just look at your own numbers, you freak? I swear! If I weren’t reading your intelligence score right now, I would assume you’re a moron. But you’re not. Look.”

At last, Sam took a deep breath, and he scanned the bracelet’s numbers. 

S-6  
P-4  
E-9  
C-3  
I-8  
A-4  
L-1

He stared. 

Dean was smiling when he turned back to him. “You’re plenty smart, kiddo. I’ve never seen numbers like these before, not on a Level-1. I doubt anybody has. You’ve got three scores above five, Sammy. And you’ve got a nine out of the gate. That’s...that’s unheard of. Highest Level-1 score I ever saw was my own agility. I’m wicked fast, but you...Sam, you’re not going to any depot. Once the Overseer catches wind that you’ve aged up, and checks your numbers, you’re going to be the talk of the vault. Dad would be really proud. I’m proud.”

Tears sprang to his eyes, and he leapt into Dean’s arms. The fit was so strange now that he was grown, but those strong arms were the same, and they held him just like always. 

Then, of course, Dean laughed at him. “Not sure how accurate this thing is,” he teased as he pushed Sam back to examine the bracelet. “Never known one to malfunction, but no way is your charisma a three.”

Sam shoved back, and he laughed too. “Shut up. Let me see yours.”

The fondness in Dean’s green eyes made him happy. “All the time, man. You know, I don’t think I ever told you. Since I aged up, and you insisted on seeing my numbers every night, it got to where every time the training hurt, I thought, yeah, but Sammy’s going to ask about my numbers, and it kept me going. Anytime I’ve had a number increase, all I could think is that I couldn’t wait to show you. You’re why my stats are some of the highest in the vault. Because you keep me working past hurt in my training.”

Dean was Level-10. He should have been just Level-4 by now, but he had pushed himself beyond what most dwellers could take, and volunteered for every job, hurried toward every danger, rushed into every fire. He was their vault’s most impressive young adult. Sam found himself relieved beyond words that his own scores would not embarrass his hero brother. 

The bracelet’s numbers gleamed from Dean’s wrist. Some of the older dwellers had rough, worn-down bracelets, because they had not increased a score in so long, in years, some of them. Many dwellers were lucky to reach the numbers Dean had earned over the course of their entire lives. But Dean’s bracelet shined like new, because it was always updating with every accomplishment in his training. 

S-7  
P-6  
E-9  
C-6  
I-6  
A-X  
L-2

The bracelets stopped at ten, and it was designated with an X instead of the number. But John had told them a secret years ago. 

“Your bracelet only shows a score up to ten. After nine, you get an X, and that’s to show you’ve maxed out a SPECIAL. But that’s only because the bracelets only have space for one digit, and because when Vault-Tec first designed them, no one could imagine anyone even living long enough, let alone training hard enough, to reach an eleven. Your scores max out at X, boys. But your abilities don’t.”

They would never stop training.

The most difficult score to increase, according to Dean, was luck. Sam had heard others say that was crazy, that strength or intelligence or one of the others was the highest hill to climb, so he assumed it must depend on the individual dweller. All the same, Sam was concerned to see his luck score as low as Dean’s was when he had aged up. Four years and countless hours in the game rooms later, even Dean had only reached a two. He was the best pool player in the vault, and second only to Bobby Singer in poker, but even while his skill improved, his luck hadn’t. The day the bracelet had finally updated to a luck score of two, Dean had gotten trashed on rum-and-NukaCola, and had been entirely insufferable. 

It was now two years after Sam had aged up. He was a Level-6, Dean a Level-14. There was constant competition between them, and no one could keep up. If Dean could level up twice a year, Sam could do it three times. If Sam could lead two missions a week, Dean sure as hell could lead three. Sam was the bane of all mole rats, and Dean squashed every radroach dumb enough to attack. Heaven help the feral ghoul who came near the vault while the two of them were home. Even the mirelurks steered out of their way when they were sent out to explore the wasteland. 

Tonight, they arrived back to the vault together, laughing breathlessly as the heavy door crashed shut behind them. Dean grinned at his brother and the third member of their team, a strong Level-20 named Benny Lafitte, a former raider who had more than earned his keep when Dean had taken a chance on him a few years back. They were out of breath from their run, and their bags were heavy, but their spirits were light. “Vault, sweet vault!” Dean laughed. 

Sam tore off his sturdy leather armor, and tossed it at Dean. “Fearless leader, pretty sure it’s your turn to do laundry.”

“What? Can’t be!”

Benny smirked. “Leave it for now, brother. Hang it on the rack and if you’re lucky somebody else will grab it.”

Sam made a disgusted face. “Yeah? Then what do I grab next time I go out? Somebody else’s gross, sweaty garb? I don’t think so. This one fits best anyway.”

“They all feel the same to me,” Dean said. 

“I’m bigger than you.”

“Not where it counts, Sammy.”

He snickered. “Yeah? Where’s that?”

Dean flashed him a wicked smile, full of perfect white teeth. “The charisma score, brother of mine. That’s where the size matters. The charisma score.”

Sam huffed dismissively. 

They grabbed the RadAway offered by the Handy at the vault door, and gave it their outfits to be cleaned. Sam was convinced the laundry could get cleaner if they did it themselves, but maybe Dean and Benny were right that it wasn’t a big deal, just this once. Besides, there were ghoul guts on his, and he was just happy not to be the one cleaning it. 

As they continued through the vault, Dean greeted everyone they encountered. Benny was a quiet, hulking shadow behind him. Sam was the one who handed off the items from their field mission, and registered their logs while Dean chatted up the woman on duty. 

“Guess who knocked out four perfect critical hits in one mission! Finished off the ten crit objective!” Dean announced gleefully upon hitting the restaurant. 

Art Ketch was sipping NukaCola as he leaned against the wall. He snorted softly. “Overseer scrapped that objective. You neglected to read your Pip-Boy again, Winchester.”

Fury lit Dean’s green eyes. “What?” he snarled. “Scrapped it!”

“Dean, relax,” Benny advised in a low voice.

“What the hell! I worked my ass off for that objective! Took me three back to back field missions!”

“Maybe that’s why the OS scrapped it,” Gordon Walker piped up from across the room. “Took you too long.” Ketch and their teammate Bela Talbot laughed with him. 

“They’re just trying to get a rise from you, man,” Sam muttered behind him. “Let’s just get our ration and go. We had a good day today.”

But Dean was already baited to the hook, stepping into Ketch’s space. “I don’t see your team taking on any of the big objectives, Walker. Must be nice to just stick to the ones any team can bring in. You three brag about how good you are, but all I see is your lazy asses snatching up every low level mission you can.”

“Dean…” came the warning drawl from his best friend. 

“No!” he barked at Benny. “You know it’s true! Garth’s team nearly got mauled in their last quest because the lower level job, the one he could have handled, was grabbed up by the douchiest team in the vault, who should’ve been aiming a little higher on the food chain.”

“Maybe the gawky team of Fitz, Gallagher and Ross should stick to the depots where they belong.”

Dean shoved Ketch at the wall. But it was Sam who spoke. “Garth, Andy, Aaron, they’ve got more heart, each one of them, than I ever saw in your whole team put together.” 

Benny sighed at his inability to keep the encounter from escalating, and squared his shoulders to match the brothers’ postures. If there was going to be a fight, everyone knew Benny was at their side, even if he clearly preferred to just take his dinner back to his living quarters to rest off their mission and the run home. 

“Yeah,” Gordon responded behind him. “Those hearts are gonna be splashed up against a wall or chewed on by mole rats any day now. Don’t get too attached, Sammy.”

“Nobody but him gets to call me that,” Sam reminded Gordon with a fierce glower. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dean smirk smugly. The jackass was enjoying this. He wanted to brawl tonight, Sam realized. It figured. Leave it to Dean to get himself into a pissing contest just minutes after walking in from a brutal hunt. 

Bela stood and smiled at them all as she stepped between the brothers and her teammates. “Boys, zip up for now, will you? Let’s not draw the attention of the OS over something so inconsequential as a scrapped objective. I, for one, enjoy my coffee breaks to go uninterrupted by a sudden extra shift at a station.”

Dean looked at her with disgust. “Bad as these two assholes,” he muttered, but he took a step back.

Ketch smiled too, at least as much as he ever did, and nodded. “We should let these boys shower up,” he said to Gordon. “I can still smell the ill-earned conceit on them.”

“That’s the ghoul guts,” Benny replied pleasantly, taking hold of each of his teammates’ arms to lead them away. “You’re probably not familiar, since you like to keep your missions to safer things like radroach infestations.”

“Keep walking, raider,” Gordon called after them. 

Benny’s hand left Sam’s shoulder to gesture crudely behind them. 

The cook on duty smiled at them when they got to the counter. “I’m really glad you guys didn’t come to blows just now,” he whispered. “Not that it wouldn’t have been fun to watch you make smears out of Ketch and Walker, but I’d have ended up being the one to clean it up.”

Sam snorted. “With Bela bitching at you the whole time.”

“Exactly. And I’d have to check my pockets for my caps if I let her get too close.”

Dean grumbled through the process of picking up their rations for the night. Then he nodded his thanks, and the three of them headed for the living quarters. 

Benny said goodnight in the elevator. Sam watched him carefully, but the older man just gave a tired laugh. “Don’t worry, Sam. I’m heading to my bunk. Only NukaCola in my glass tonight.”

He was glad to hear that their friend wouldn’t be giving in to the temptation to add the rum to his drink. But he shook his head. “You ought to stick to water for a while, man. You lost a lot of blood today.”

“Had my stim. I feel fine.”

Dean looked up. “Yeah?”

Benny shrugged. “Another day, another pint of blood, another refreshing stim and satisfying ration. It’s good work followed by a safe place to sleep. Can’t ask for more than that, brother. More than I ever had out in the waste.”

“‘Night, Benny.”

“Goodnight. And, Dean? You did good. I don’t care that the OS scrapped that objective. You reached it, and that’s something none of the rest of us could’ve done. So congratulations.”

Sam watched a true smile return to his brother’s face. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Thanks, man.” They smacked one another’s arms and went their separate ways as the doors opened on the barracks floor. Sam followed Dean quietly. “What about you?”

Sam looked up as they set their food down inside their room. “Me? What about me?”

His brother reached into his ration bag and examined his dinner. “Plans?”

Suddenly, Sam felt a warm flush creeping up his throat. He turned away from Dean quickly. “No. No, nothing. Just a shower and maybe I’ll read something. I found a book in some brush on the way home. Think it might actually be intact.”

“The other nerds will be grateful,” Dean teased. “You’re like their scavenging nerd king.” 

But Sam knew Dean, and he could see the light of interest in his eyes too. The stubborn warrior would never ask, so he offered up the information. “It’s fiction, I think. I’ll let you know if it’s complete.”

Hope widened those green eyes just slightly. “Yeah. Whatever. If I got nothing better to do. Might be worth a look, if all the pages are there and everything.”

He smiled with fondness at Dean’s attempt at indifference. “I’ll let you know,” he promised again. “You heading out for a drink or a game?”

“Yeah, thought I might. Benny’s right. The OS scrapped the goal, but I still feel like I deserve to celebrate something, you know?”

“Of course you do. You’re the one told me so long ago that you gotta celebrate your victories when you get them, because nobody else will, and you gotta move past your defeats…”

“Because nobody else will,” Dean finished for him. “True as ever.”

“Yeah.”

Dean had finished eating by the time Sam emerged from his shower, and was about to head out to find some fun, at the risk of the OS noticing he had free time and assigning him a station shift. He stopped in the doorway. “Sammy? Don’t go hunting for ghosts all night. Okay? Get some rest. Tomorrow is a training day.”

“Training for you. Running for me.”

His brother frowned. “They’re sending you running in the waste right after a field mission like we just took?”

Sam shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“You’ll take Riot, won’t you?”

“If he’s available. Or Bones, if he’s not.”

“You ought to get first call on Riot. You’re the one brought him back to the vault in the first place.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way. I’ll get the pet I’m assigned. Hope it’s Riot or Bones. But it ain’t up to me.”

Dean sighed, but he let it go. “You heard me about ghost watching.”

“It’s not a ghost, Dean.”

“It might as well be.”

Sam shook his head in frustration. “He’s not a ghost,” he insisted again. “Just leave me alone about it.”

“Sammy-“

“Go! Drink and game and whatever. I’m fine.”

His brother nodded slowly. “Okay. Just don’t wander the vault all night, kiddo. OS is apt to put you to work someplace if you’re caught out. And you gotta be alert if you’re running tomorrow.”

“Go.”

Once he was alone at last, Sam pulled his journal from under his bunk and flipped through the last several pages of it while he munched an apple from the garden. 

Sightings last night, two of them. One at about midnight, in the smaller classroom on floor two. One after three, in the strength training gym. Throughout the week before, there had been no sightings, but Charlie had confided in him that there had been three alarm incidents registered in the computers. So he had been there, somewhere inside the vault, but no one had seen him. 

Sam closed his eyes, and he thought about those amazing times when he had been the one to spot The Mysterious Stranger.


	2. Mysterious and Strange

There was no pattern to the appearances that Sam could figure out. He had even taken his data, accumulated over years of obsessive research and documentation, to Kevin Tran, who had been equal parts fascinated and freaked out by Sam’s commitment, but who had ultimately agreed that the location of the appearances were random. But the timing of them was not. 

It took a very long time to work out the equation for the intervals, and that was when he and Kevin had enlisted Charlie’s help. She worked the radio station most days, which gave her access to information and time the others didn’t have. She had been intrigued, and had set to work logging the silent alarms in the vault computers that registered when The Stranger was inside the vault. 

“No one knows how he gets in or why,” Sam said again and again over the years. “Isn’t that enough of a reason to want to find out?”

Kevin had added trivia from his encyclopedic brain, things like the fact that it had taken a weirdly long time for anyone to even connect the alarm blips with the sightings of The Stranger. “Nobody even knew what the readings were telling us. Seems like someone should have figured that out a lot longer ago than our parents’ generation.”

Charlie had shrugged. “I hear there were rads in the NukaCola back then. Like, real rads.”

“Charlie, there is radiation in the NukaCola,” Kevin insisted. “You know that, right?”

“Are you serious? Still? I thought that was way back!”

Kevin had blinked. “Is that...not common knowledge? Maybe I’m not supposed to tell anyone that.” He made a face then. “Why did you think my lab has to constantly be putting out RadAways for the whole vault?”

Charlie put her hands up. “I don’t know! Because of the runners!”

“What little radiation the runners bring back is neutralized upon return. If it were just them, or the guys who run the field quests, we wouldn’t have to give them to the whole population all the time. It’s the cola.”

“Whoa,” Charlie cried. “I’m so taking a NukaLeak all over this! People have a right to know! This is going in our broadcast next shift!”

Sam had shaken his head. “Guys, can we focus? The Stranger?”

Kevin stared at Charlie one more moment, then turned to Sam. “Yeah. Right. Anyway, I’m saying it’s like we are all just weirdly oblivious when it comes to him. It’s like…”

“It’s a complete lack of curiosity,” Charlie added. 

The lab scientist snapped his fingers. “That’s it. That’s it exactly. Like something about him makes us all just want to think of something else. We don’t think about him till he shows up. Then we don’t think about him again until he’s back. Sam, you’re the only one I know who has ever had any kind of dedication to learning more about him.”

“Maybe it’s the radiation,” Charlie mused. 

The young man turned on her. “It’s not the-Charlie, the RadAway I have devoted every day of my adulthood to producing is perfectly effective! You’re safe so long as you take it!”

“Then why don’t they tell us what’s in the NukaCola?”

“It’s proprietary, and anyway, I thought everyone knew…”

Sam had watched his friends drift away from the conversation of The Stranger, no matter how many times he tried to bring them back to it. They were right. No one had any attention span when it related to The Stranger. No one wondered, not for more than a few minutes. The Stranger arrived, the computers-and now Charlie-recorded it, and then everyone forgot all about it until the next time. No one was ever more than momentarily surprised or even concerned when it happened, and they certainly didn’t talk about it, even if they were among the lucky few to catch The Stranger and be gifted caps by him. Even Charlie and Kevin, who enjoyed the search for patterns and conspiracies, were uncharacteristically distractible when it came to The Stranger. No one seemed to think about the phenomenon at all. 

Except for Sam. 

After months and months of sifting through data, his own and Charlie’s, and what few other sources he could find, he was able to present to Kevin a compilation of intervals, and challenged him to find the equation which linked them. Perhaps Sam could have discovered it himself, if given the time, but his own days were filled with runs and missions and training, and Dean was right that he did, in fact, require rest. So he had handed over his data, and waited anxiously for Kevin’s results. 

They had come one busy morning, in the form of a note taped to the door of Sam’s locker, in Kevin’s handwriting. Sam had begun trembling the moment he had seen it. The series of numbers and characters was complex, but hardly impossible. 

He had it. He had the timing for The Stranger. If he put the time of the last several incidents into this equation, it should result in the prediction of the one to follow. If Kevin was right, Sam might not know where to look, but he would know exactly when. As for the location, Sam knew just one thing. The Stranger always appeared everywhere eventually. 

No one had been in the small storage depot on the bottom floor of the massive underground vault for years. It just wasn’t needed. Mice and occasional mole rats were the only ones on shift there these days. It was the furthest room from the power centers, so if the vault was ever running cold, that little storage room was the first to lose power and the last to get it back. That made it completely impractical for storing anything of any real value, and too far to run to for something common. It held some bits of junk that no one would ever come looking for. The place should have been filthy, except for one thing. 

This floor had a Handy. 

Not every floor had one of the robotic helpers known as Mr. Handy. Most of the time, they were reserved for high-traffic areas, to clean behind and protect the dwellers as they worked and lived. But the bottom floor was different. It touched the earth, so mole rats tunneled in to cause mischief regularly. Without dwellers working down there, the mole rats would be free to infest the whole place, and then the rest of the vault room by room. It had to be monitored, and a Handy was the perfect one to do so. The Handy wandered room to room throughout the level, and dealt with any problems it encountered. Once a day, a dweller checked on the Handy, provided any needed maintenance or repairs to it, then left it to its job for another twenty-four hours. 

Sam had the entire level to himself, other than that Handy, and it was the cleanest floor in the vault, since there was nothing happening in it other than cleaning. The other storage rooms were used, but very rarely. The one Sam had claimed for himself never saw another dweller, ever. 

The Handy A.I. seemed to appreciate Sam’s company somewhat. It didn’t chatter to itself like the others did as they went about their work on the higher floors. It checked in on Sam when he was there, tidied up his stash when he wasn’t, and let him have his peace. 

Tonight, while Benny was sleeping off his injuries and desire to drink, while Dean was helping himself to all the bottle cap currency in one of the gaming rooms, at a poker table, Sam crept down to the lowest floor, to the furthest room, to curl into his sleeping bag and wait. 

Sam had nearly fallen asleep in the dark room when his Pip-Boy gave a single beep. It was his timer, to tell him The Stranger would be somewhere in the vault in ten seconds. There wasn’t time to search for him. He had tried that, his whole life. If he knew when to watch, he could be anywhere, and one day The Stranger would come to him. 

He snuggled into his blanket happily. It didn’t matter if tonight wasn’t the night. Something about being on watch just made him happy. He couldn’t do it every night, of course, and never during the day. But tonight, he would at least be in the vault, and know that, somewhere nearby, The Stranger was back. That was good enough. They would be breathing the same recycled air. Did The Stranger breathe? Was he human? Was he friend or foe? Benign or malignant, or callously indifferent? 

Ten heartbeats later, the extraordinary happened. 

The Stranger was there. After so many nights spent watching, there he was, right in front of Sam. 

He let out a hoarse noise from his throat. 

The Stranger turned to look at him in surprise, and reached for his hat to pull it over his face. 

“No! Please wait!” Sam scrambled out of his blanket to stand. “Please!”

There was a hesitation. 

Sam put his hands up in front of him. “Please! Caps, you’re going to drop caps for me, but I don’t want that. I wanted to talk!”

The Stranger peeked out from under his hat. 

The Level-6 felt his heart pounding. “I know you’re on a schedule. Maybe you don’t have time. But please. I’ve waited so long! You don’t remember me, but-but I’ve actually seen you three times before. Twice in a classroom as a kid, once at the vault door. I’ve waited for you ever since. Please. Just don’t disappear yet.”

The eyes lowered, then lifted again. Their bright blue seemed to fill the room with light. “You wait for me?”

“Yes! Yes, I’ve waited my whole life.” 

The Stranger had spoken to him. No one was ever going to believe this, but Sam didn’t care. It was the most wonderful night, the most terrifying night he could remember.

“Please,” he said again. 

The very deep voice was back. “No one has ever waited for me before.”

Sam stared at him. He was certain The Stranger had never spent so much time in one place before. “I do,” he breathed. “I think of you all the time. Please, will you stay for even just a few minutes?”

The Stranger seemed torn for a moment. Then he nodded once. “I’m curious as to why you think of me at all,” he admitted. He lowered himself slowly to sit on the ground. It was a strangely stiff movement, as though he was utterly unfamiliar with the concept of sitting. 

The Level-6 laughed delightedly, and sat too. His heart was racing without mercy. “It’s really you!” he sighed. 

“And who are you, vault dweller?”

“Sam. I’m Sam. I-Look! Look, I log your visits in this book. A whole book, with blank pages, all dedicated to you coming and going.”

The Stranger stared at the journal Sam showed him. “You’ve been meticulous. And I know books are hard to come by. Why would you waste paper on me?”

It was like a slap to the face. “Waste?” he gasped. “You think it’s a waste? It’s...Sir, this has been my life’s work up to now! It’s been-It’s such an honor to meet you!”

The man’s head tipped to the side with confusion. “Why?” 

This time, when Sam’s mouth opened, nothing came out. 

The Stranger went back to studying the journal. “I think you may be obsessively compulsive to the point of disorder, Sam.”

The stammer bubbled up his throat and finally made it past his tongue. “But-but you’re-Nobody knows who you are! Why do you come here? Do you have a name? How do you get in? Why do you give caps? Why the trench coat?”

He glanced down at his own chest. “I like my coat.”

“But…” Sam found that he had run out of voice. 

“My name. It’s Castiel. Cas. I’m...I’m just an observer. And I give caps because you vault types seem to like them. I gather them in my travels, and if I’m caught trespassing in a vault, I simply give whatever is in my pockets as a peace offering, and hurry away. It has never been my intention to cause any trouble or to concern anyone.”

“Castiel.” He let his lips taste the word thoughtfully. “So...you’re not here to help, but also not here to hinder.”

“No. Neither. And other than one particular synthetic being you call Handy and you now, I’ve never spoken with anyone in a vault before.”

Sam shook his head. His mind was whirring with new information. “Wait. Wait, you talk to a Handy?”

“I do. Just one. The others seem not to take any notice of me, but the one who comes to this room always says hello. I find that fascinating, that of all the synthetic beings and human dwellers, the only two who should ever show any real notice of me do so in this particular room. Do you also find that odd?”

As if on cue, the floor’s Handy glided into the room. “Hello, Castiel,” it purred, as it began its work cleaning around them. “Hello, Sam Winchester.”

Sam’s jaw fell. “You just called me Sam.”

The Handy turned back to him. “Your name is Sam,” he responded. 

“But-but you never call me that. I’ve never heard a Handy call anybody by name before.”

“If you’re offended, I will never do so again. I’m happy to serve.”

Sam stared at it. “No. That’s okay. Call me Sam if you like. You’re different from any other Handy I ever knew, but that isn’t bad. Do you...have a name too?”

“I am Floor Handy 401 of Vault 327, manufacturer's identification 1MP4L467-KAz-2Y5, Batch CNK80Q3.”

“That’s your number. Do you have a name? Like we do?”

The Handy hovered in place to consider. Then it spoke again. “In the time before I greet you again, I will endeavor to create a name which will be my designation.”

Sam laughed quietly. “Yeah. Okay. Do that.”

“I have said I will do that.” 

Castiel was watching them both with bright curiosity. “This interaction fascinates me,” he breathed. “I might like to return to observe more one day. Would that be permissible?”

His heartbeat was relentless. “Yes! But please, can’t you stay just a while longer now? I have so many questions! Or...or I can not ask questions if that’s better. But I have-“

“Many questions,” Castiel finished for him. “I can see that. We can talk, but I admit to feeling a little overwhelmed already. I’ve never spoken to a dweller, and I’m afraid I’m ill-equipped for the task. It’s been...an era since I spoke with anyone at all, in fact. So my people skills are...rusty.”

“Would it help if you left now but came back later tonight? Is that something you can do? I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable. If you need a break, I understand. Sometimes I need a break from talking to people. So I don’t mind. And I will wait here, in this room, all night long.”

A tiny smile lit The Stranger’s handsome face. “You will, won’t you?”

“He has said that he will,” the Handy responded quietly, then glided out of the room to work elsewhere. 

Castiel watched it go, then looked back at Sam. “I will return to this room after a short amount of time. There are things I must do...or that I feel I must do. Then I will come back to you, Sam Winchester, while it is still night.”

His heart was soaring with excitement. He nodded, and didn’t trust himself to open his mouth without questions blurting out of it. 

The Stranger faded black until he could no longer be seen, and Sam knew he was gone for now. Would he really return? Was he a man of his word? Was he a man at all? What man could do what he did, appear and disappear through steel vault walls and solid rock? 

Sam couldn’t wait to ask.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are like sweet, sweet cram and Sugarbombs or pie for authors! Thank you for commenting! It makes my day!
> 
> ~Posing


End file.
